3?
by abbyfillion22
Summary: 3 Castle babies in the future? One can hope, but only Time Will Tell


Castle slowly whisks the egg into an even pasty-yellow, trying to work up the nerve to bring up the conversation they had been coyly skirting around for the past few months. He feels anxious; like he had in middle school the first time he asked a girl to the dance.

They stand shoulder-to-shoulder at the kitchen island, preparing omelets before work. Kate is busy chopping up a green bell pepper and keeps purposefully nudging him with her elbow. The knife she's using makes a soft _chhh-sh-thump _noise as it slices through the crisp pepper and hits the cutting board.

Castle continues turning the whisk even though it's perfectly mixed already and glances at Kate out of the corner of his eye while pretending to be fixated on the task at hand.

"What?" Kate asks, catching him staring.

"Nothing," he says automatically, whisking harder and faster to compensate for his blushing.

Kate sets down the gigantic blade in the pile of pepper and ducks her head to meet his eye. "Babe, you know you can talk to me about anything."

"THREE!" Castle blurts before he can stop himself. "We have three kids in the future!"

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, Jesus Christ," she groans. "You seriously believe Simon? Castle, that guy was crazy." She fails to mention the coffee stain on the note for her own benefit; not looking to feed the fire that is Castle's imagination.

"Not according to his psyche eval."

Kate takes the overly-whisked egg bowl from him and dumps it on the frying pan where it sizzles and steams over the flickering blue flames. "He said that I would become senator and you, a serious lit writer. If that isn't crazy, I don't know what is."

"What, you don't think I can write serious literature?"

She shuffles the egg goo around a bit before dropping in the ham slices. "No, but you know how I feel about politics. There's no way I would ever run for senator." She begins to hand-shred the bits of cheese and sprinkles it over the mix.

Castle shakes his head as he reaches around her to turn the flame down a notch. "Anyways, that's not the point. The point is that we have _three _kids, Kate. Three." He gives her the Boy Scout salute.

She turns around so her back is to the stove and stares at him. "Would you… want three kids?" she asks hesitantly. Kate had never seen herself having children of her own, but now that Castle's come along, she would seriously consider the possibility of a few Castle babies.

He shrugs. "I wouldn't… _mind_ it," he says quietly, wanting to hear her opinion before committing wholly to his own. "Would you?"

"I don't know Castle," she sighs, turning back to the cooking omelet. He hands her the peppers and she dumps them into the pan. "I mean, you already have Alexis, do you really want to go through that three more times?"

Although he had rather enjoyed raising his daughter, Castle takes Beckett's comment as her way of saying that three is too high of a number for her. "Well, you have to admit, our kids would be very cute," he says, wrapping his arms around her waist.

She smiles. "I can't disagree with that." Truth be told, she has put some thought into what their kids would be like. She imagines her daughter with his eyes and dark hair, her facial features, and his creative personality. Their son would be Rick 100%. "They _would_ be very cute. But three?"

"One, then," he compromises, secretly hoping that if they were to have one kid, that it would be a boy.

"Did you like being an only child?" she counters.

They're both remembering the lonely Christmases and other holidays they had spent with their parents and no one else to share the joy with, the undivided attention thrust upon them with no diffusion among other brothers and sisters.

"Two," they say in unison.

"And a cat," Castle adds.

"Seriously? A cat."

"Two kids and a dog."

"It has to be a big dog; not some little prissy purse dog."

Castle snaps his fingers. "We could train it to be a police dog and bring it with us to crime scenes!" he says excitedly.

She laughs. "Yeah, okay Castle, we'll see." She scoops the completed omelet out of the pan, folds it over, and hands it to him.

He uses the edge of the fork to cut a small triangular piece and feeds it to her. "I like talking about our future," he says happily, profusely satisfied with the outcome of the conversation.

Kate takes the bite of hot egg and savors the combination of the ham and swiss; the crunch of the peppers and onions adding an extra bite to the overall flavor. "Even if you're not married to a senator?"

Castle takes a bite himself. "Even if." He pauses to think about it. "Although, a woman in power is _very_ sexy."

She rolls her eyes and steals another piece of his egg. "Yeah, you keep dreaming, Castle."

"It's not a _dream _Beckett," he says with an exasperated sigh, "it's our _fate_. And you can't change fate now matter how hard you try."

"Castle, you just negated our entire conversation!" she smiles. "What was the point of deciding to have two kids and a dog if we "can't change fate"?"

He thinks about it. "I said that _you _can't change fate, I never said _I _couldn't."

"Well maybe if you could keep it in your pants, we wouldn't have so many kids in the first place," she challenges.

"Me?! Keep it in _my _pants?!" he cries incredulously, setting the plate on the counter so he can gesticulate. "What about you? It takes _two, _Beckett."

She narrows her eyes. "Well maybe if you weren't so irresistible, I'd be able to keep my hands off of you for more than five seconds and we won't end up like the Duggars… divided by seven." Simultaneously, she's undoing the buttons of his shirt and sliding her hands over his broad chest.

"Oh, so you're saying it's my fault because I'm too irresistible?" he asks, quietly receding as she tugs on his belt.

Kate buries her nose in the curve of his neck and kisses his collarbone. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."

"I'll take that," he agrees.

* * *

**Author's Note: I wrote this when I was hungry. You may have noticed by my last few food-related fics that I've been hungry a lot recently :P**


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